Eurovision: Rants from a barefooter

Monthly Archives: July 2016

American presidential elections can be a complete shitshow. There’s lots of mudslinging between candidates, drinking games made debates, Wikileaks has fueled the drama fire by releasing new information, and sometimes even the Supreme Court gets involved. So much for whatever reality TV people are watching right now; there’s often so much drama that people could get away with watching C-Span (live broadcast of the legislature in action) and claim that they’re watching “reality TV” (or even better: “reality”). Sometimes it’s really overwhelming, and it makes me want to borrow Maraaya’s headphones, tune things out, and focus on the Eurovision world right now. Unfortunately, there’s still no escape, no matter on the blue side or the red side. So let’s just look at Eurovision-y stuff. (I can’t say I’m from the purple side because US politics likes binaries way too much, and apparently the cake is a lie anyways.)

From the Democratic side: split voting
While there is *slightly* less televised drama (cue all the Wikileaks information that just got released about the DNC), one of the most widely complained things about the party is the superdelegate/split voting system. In short, a candidate needs 2383 out of 4765 delegates’ official votes to win the Democratic nomination. Out of the 4765 official votes, 4049 votes are assigned through popular vote (like televoting). The remaining 716 votes come from superdelegates (kind of like jury members), who don’t vote until late July. As of so far, we only have the delegate count from the popular vote as the superdelegates have not yet voted. However, given that the jury vote superdelegate vote counts for less than 20% of the total vote count, it’s not going to be as crazy as Poland’s jump from last to 8th place.

It’s probably going to be more like the scoring at UMK, where the televote/jury split is 90/10. But given all the background noise that Wikileaks brought up from within the party, someone’s going to get yelled at for corruption in the voting.From the Republican Side: Ted Cruz’s 17-year-old lookalike, ManuElla’s angry Republican, Slovenia’s infamous in-laws
Republican primary voting is a lot more straightforward; the total delegate count depends on televote popular vote only. Outside of the voting, there are the candidates. For starters, there’s this:
Somehow Sweden managed to send Ted Cruz’s 17-year-old lookalike, who was not the Zodiac Killer. Frans did make all of Twitter blow up when [insert any of the other 11 Melodifestivalen finalists here] didn’t win, and SVT definitely wasn’t sorry, especially after jumping to #1 on Swedish Spotify or placing 5th in the contest.

Otherwise, Slovenia had a lot of fun representing Republicans this year: In February, when there were still enough candidates for the debates to still be fun enough to watch (and make fun of), Slovenia sent ManuElla’s “Blue and Red.”

If the two colors represent the two parties, then the song can be the anthem of an angry Republican performed in the form of a Taylor Swift-style breakup song:“And you tried to fix me when I wasn’t strong, but you are not a composer; I am not your song”
(And when your party took up the majority of congressional seats, you introduced all this stuff (e.g. Obamacare, 626 marriage equality, etc.), but you’re not in full control of the government, and we’re not going to be manipulated by you.)

“How can I mix red and blue together?”
(How can our two political parties work together, if our beliefs and values are so different?)

“You feel blue and I feel better”
(Well we’re not going to work together, so you introduce your own legislation (that we’re not going to let pass) and we’re going to introduce our own legislation.)

Let’s not forget the obvious point for Slovenia: The country now has (in/famous) in-laws that are taking over the news. And got the Republican official nomination as well.

(But more importantly, while everyone can complain about politics drama, don’t forget to vote. You can’t complain about the results if you’re eligible to vote and you don’t cast your opinion.)

Bloc voting (or if you’re nice, cultural/neighborly voting) is one of the biggest complaints about the contest if your country (*cough*UK*cough*) doesn’t get enough points: Bosnia-Herzegovina gives 12 points to Serbia. Greece and Cyprus do their annual exchange of douze pointe. (Or in this case Greece gives 12 points to the Greek composer who co-wrote the Russian entry). Belarus gives Russia 12 points. And Armenia and Poland grab points from diaspora all over the continent.

As a viewer in the USA, I can’t vote because the US doesn’t participate in the contest. Okay, technically I could vote with the right simcard and a zillion dollars of roaming data fees, but in reasonable situations I can’t. But what if there was one theoretical/extremely unlikely year where a) I hadn’t heard any of the songs prior, b) didn’t get to watch the performances, and c) had the chance to vote at reasonable charges? I might have to pull a lazy bloc vote. But how would I do that?

Vote for an English-speaking country (UK, Ireland, Malta, or Australia): This will probably be my easiest choice. Malta might be a bit harder to point out on a map, but at least I’ll have a 200% chance that the song that I vote for won’t be co-written by Google Translate. There’s no guarantee that the song is cheesy as a truckload of Parmesan though…

Vote for Sweden: Since I live next door to Ikea live close enough to Ikea to regularly grab their free coffee, I might as well claim I’m sitting in a Swedish settlement and send a “diaspora” vote from the store. That is, if they change the music to something other than Michael Buble and kids screaming about chicken fingers.

Vote for the American: If I feel like doing the work, I could go online and find out if there are any Americans in the contest (like Hannah Mancini, Tamar Kaprelian, or Katrina Leskanich). Also, considering that Canada is less than an hour’s drive away, I could put in a vote for a Canadian as well (like Rykka or Celine Dion). If I misread anything, there’s a chance I might end up voting for an Armenian instead of an American. And no, that’s not from seeing Kardashian tabloid spam at 7-Eleven.

Vote for Iceland: Looking east across the Atlantic, Iceland is probably the closest country in Europe from the USA.

Vote for Denmark: Nix the Icelandic comment because Greenland is part of Denmark, and it’s even closer to the USA looking east.

Vote for Russia: I’ve got to thank Sarah Palin for pointing out that “she can see Russia from her house.” I might not be able to do that, but at least she confirmed that Russia’s close enough to vote for as a neighbor.

Vote for whatever country your great-great-whatever-ancestor came from: I’m ABC (American born Chinese, not Austrian born Croatian), so I don’t think this would work very well. In that case, I’ll just hand my phone to my friend from uni and let him punch in the number for Finland.

Or there’s the tried-and-true method:

Throw a dart at a map, and vote for whatever country the dart lands on.

Ehhhh….I’ll save my 20 votes for when I get the chance to go to Europe during ESC week then…

After hearing Petr Elfimov’s “Eyes that Never Lie” a few times, I knew that I wanted to use the song to thank someone; maybe it would be really nice to do so around Thanksgiving. But then I realized that half of them were going to be sarcastic, so here’s a handful of the sarcastic ones right now.

And yes, I should be thankful for them for the first 2 levels on Maslow’s pyramid and helping with uni costs, but sometimes it’s really hard to see that. Sometimes it’s harder to see anything good if there’s a bunch of pain to get rid of first. I’ll try to post something a bit more positive, but right now I needed to vent a little.

Thanks for invading my privacy, so now I have to try harder to hide stuff.

Thanks for discrediting everything I try to say, so now I’m not going to try explaining anything if you’re just going to say “yeah, yeah, okay, we got it, you’re absolutely right.”

Thanks for turning every 5 second joke into a 20 minute lecture, because now I don’t even want to talk to you anymore.

Thanks for deciding that I don’t have any mental health issue and I’m just lazy, because now I know you won’t support my decision to get tested at the psych clinic at uni.

Thanks for telling me to give up my passions as they’re not worthwhile, so now I’ll go out as a soulless robot who has to have happiness reprogrammed inside of me.

Thanks for threatening to throw me out of the house whenever I have a panic attack, because now I have to hold it inside and wait until I’m alone for everything to explode.

Thanks for telling me that I can’t sing or listen to music in the house, so now I have to wait until after 10:30 pm to listen to my 8GB of psychiatrist using headphones.

Thanks for dismissing any successes, so the same goes with #3: I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

Thanks for telling me that everyone my age is so much more successful than I will ever be. I don’t want to hear any more about how A has a job in California, B is doing research in grad school, and I’m getting a shite job at the pharmacy making something that’s barely $2 above minimum wage.

Thanks for making my heartrate shoot up every time you call my name, because there can’t be anything good if it’s you calling.

Thanks for reminding me that no one likes me, because apparently I don’t have real friends, my profs are just being polite as a job requirement, and my SO doesn’t really exist…